EDISON THINKS THE STAGE IS DOOMED.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 49, 27 February 1913, Page 5

EDISON THINKS THE STAGE IS DOOMED.

o RESULT OF NEW TALKING PICTURES. Thomas A. Edison said on January 6 that he believed the end of the present legitimate stage was at hand as a result of his newest invention, the talking motion-picture machine, called the kinetophone, which proved successful in a demonstration held a few days before. The inventor explained why lie thinks the present two-doliar show must give way to, a cheaper form of amusement, which be declared will give almost as much as the other for one-twentieth of the price. There will be no more barnstormers either, because no one will he willing to pay for second-class acting when the foremost stars are perfecting for the “Talcuics” and can be seen and heard for a dime. The inventor said, at the Edison plant in West Orange, X.J.; “We want democracy in our amusements, lb is safe to say that only one out of every fifty persons in the United States has any real right to spend the price asked for a theatre ticket. What chance has a working man for amusement whose income is from two to three dollars a day? No chance at all, except at the motion pictures; and the fact that 16,000,000 a day see motion pictures in the United States shows the poor realise this. “Actors will have to leave the legitimate stage to work for the ‘movies’ in order to get any money. That is all the better for them. They can live in one place all the year round, and barn-storming will cease automatically when no one wants to pay several times the amount of a movies show for some inferior production of a stale play. “They will he able to lead a normal borne lifm 1 can see nothing in the future but big studios, centralised perhaps in New York, employing all the actors all tho year round, and at a hotter figure than they now get.”